Hunter S. Thompson is dead. The good news is that the U.S. Government probably didn't kill him.

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. He shot himself last Sunday [20 February 2005.]

It would be too easy to make too much of it. Some sweeping, weepy comment about larger society.

And he was a degenerate, if you believe the legend he reinforced about himself. Drink and drugs. Insanity, even. Couldn't have been much left of him at this point, maybe. Still. It's hard not to get weepy. Not weepy, but philo-so-phi-cal.

Fuck that.

I just mostly find it disturbing at core because Thompson's work is some of the very little writing that is tolerable. Enjoyable; yes. I say "tolerable" since most writers are either boring or exasperating. Unbearable. Can't stand 'em. And that's what makes Hunter S. Thompson's death notable. He did some good writing. His writing was fun and important. You don't find that.

I think my personal urge to make something symbolic of this man's death is the horrid state of journalism in America. More accurately, the horrid conditions that journalism is suffering in America. The courts are finding against journalists in important cases, and, really, against journalism. I think that there is a concerted effort to erode the power of the press, and it's not secret, not hidden.

That's my own personal tendency to attribute, to connect, to expound, philosophize on the news of the death of Thompson. But that's crap. Thompson shot himself. I don't know why. We don't know why. He doesn't know why. He's dead.